Certainly the country has reason to be dissatisfied
with the present conduct of the Indian war on the plains.
It was begun by volunteer troops of the United States in
1864 by the commission of a series of outrages culminating
in the horrible "Chivington massacre." It has been
characterized in its progress since only by ambuscades and
massacres of the white settlers, travelers, and troops. The
great industrial enterprise of the age, the Pacific
Railroad, has been retarded--it is now, as far as one
branch is concerned, abandoned; the overland routes to the
Pacific coast have been interrupted, and, practically,
travel is at this time suspended. Fights, in which our
troops are invariably at the disadvantage of inadequate
numbers of men and animals, are of almost daily occurrence;
and disasters to our arms or massacres of our settlers have
been recorded and illustrated in this journal for the last
ten months with painful frequency. Nothing, literally
nothing, has been accomplished by the commands of Generals
Hancock and Custer in their seemingly purposeless marches
to and fro between the Platte and Arkansas rivers; the
Indians, in small but decidedly predatory bands, control
the whole region between those streams and along the Kansas
and Colorado border. And yet we are officially told that
this ineffective style of warfare is costing the country
$1,000,000 per day, and it was estimated a month ago that
$100,000,000 would be expended in accomplishing the work of
subduing about ten or fifteen thousand warriors spread over
a territory of only about two hundred miles square. At the
present rate of progress it will certainly cost that
much.

But is there not a cheaper, wiser, and more humane
method of dealing with these refractory subjects? Is it
imperatively necessary that the country should prosecute
the war to the "lame and impotent conclusion" which it
threatens? What has become of the mysterious Indian Peace
Commissioners lately mentioned as at Washington ready to
proceed to the scene of warfare? If such a Commission is
not on its way to the West one should be sent immediately,
and the war terminated at once. If we were right in
beginning it we are powerful enough to afford to be
generous in granting terms of peace; if we were at
fault--and there remains but little doubt of that--we ought
to be for that reason more eager to conclude a liberal
peace. It is very clearly understood that this, like all
the previous Indian wars in the West, originated in
disputes between the Indians and white settlers--that it is
the natural contest arising out of the clashing of the
adverse interests of the two races located on and each
claiming the territory; and the surest way to settle this
and prevent all similar wars, is for the Government to take
its proper position as an arbiter between its sons and its
dependents, and see that the latter have mercy shown them.
It is not justice but mercy that the Government is called
upon to exercise, for justice to the poor, contemptible,
and degraded Indian would be severest cruelty. The Indian
tribes, as regards numbers and nature, are in a dependent
state; they prefer that idle and ignoble condition, and can
be just as well, and much more cheaply, taken care of as
our pensioners than as our antagonists. In every treaty
which has been made with them for years past they have
easily been induced to abandon their old homes for new
reservations away from the white man's track; and there is
nothing to prevent a sensible commission, properly
authorized, from inducing all the belligerent tribes
occupying the envied and contested ground between the
Platte and Arkansas rivers to remove to more remote
hunting-grounds by the judicious expenditure of a few
millions in trinkets and annuities.